What I’m seeing in the world right now, particularly in my own country, can be described in many ways: depressing, infuriating, devastating, shocking, terrifying, heartless, demonic, and so many more. With each passing week, almost each day, there are new restrictions, new lockdowns, new ways of expanding the tyrannical reign of power-obsessed individuals who have not lost anything. While everyone else is subjected to rules made up by politicians and bureaucrats circumventing their own laws, including the Constitution itself (which has practically become a meaningless document to them now), egged on of course by the media and their loyal subservient subjects who for some absurd reason still believe the government actually cares about them, the same elites are running rampant, breaking the rules they impose, and still making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salaries.

If the government cared about you, why would they limit your exercise? If the government cared about you, why would they isolate you, locking you in your own homes for weeks and months on end, causing unknowable damage to your mental health, and preventing you from coming into contact with germs so that your immune system does not become weakened? If the government cared about you, why would they come out each and every day to fearmonger, and run advertisements that seek to scare you into submission? If the government cared about you, why would they do everything in their power to stop you from working, to shut down your businesses, to take your livelihoods from you, causing excessive amounts of stress, which is known to incapacitate the immune system? If the government cared, they wouldn’t be doing all they can to destroy your lives, to destroy your health, to destroy your own natural immune system.

Quite frankly, the government couldn’t care less about you. No matter what you do, they will still impose restrictions, they will still impose lockdowns, they will still refuse to relinquish power, they will still refuse to give you back your freedoms. We are now more than a year and a half into “two weeks to flatten the curve”. We are now more than a year and a half into “the deadliest virus on the planet”. And yet the vast majority of us are all still here, still under varying degrees of imprisonment.

Throughout this period, families have been kept apart. People have been unable to visit their loved ones, even when those loved ones are critically ill or dying. Kids have been kept from seeing their friends at school and forming important emotional bonds for the betterment of their own development. We have normalized covering our faces constantly with masks that don’t even keep out asbestos particles, let alone the virus particles, staying away from friends and family, and being overly cautious with what we touch and what we do, teaching our kids that this is how society is apparently supposed to function. A healthy society does not function in this manner. All we’re really doing is creating a generation of kids and young people who will have trouble forming relationships in their lives and will end up feeling overwhelming loneliness. We are creating a generation that will be plagued by mental illness.

This is already evident in that thousands upon thousands of calls are being made to mental health and suicide helplines. Just yesterday, there were more than 3500 calls in one day to Lifeline. That is the largest number they’ve seen in a single day in more than 58 years. Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 75% of young people said that the pandemic had negatively impacted their mental health (and two-thirds said their studies had suffered). In Victoria, the government has tried to hide a report showing increases in major mental health issues arising from the constant lockdowns and restrictions. It showed that the number of teenagers rushed to hospital after self-harming and having suicidal thoughts spiked by 51%, equating to 148 per week. It also showed a 26% increase in serious eating disorders, and a 34% increase in new eating disorders, increasing from a weekly average of 654 in 2020 to 878 this year. Average weekly emergency department presentations for children aged up to 17 has been running at 319, a 27% increase from 2020. But when asked about young people dying under restrictions, specifically eight young girls who had taken their own lives, Daniel Andrews has been dismissive, acting as if these kids are not taking their own lives because of his selfish actions. This is a mental health crisis, and it has been described as a “shadow pandemic. If anything, it is the real pandemic, and it is only occurring because of the lockdowns and heavy-handed restrictions imposed upon society.

What has been pervaded upon society is truly inhumane. And there are several groups of people who are responsible. These include: the government, unelected bureaucrats, the media, and all those who support the constant lockdowns and arbitrary restrictions. Every single one of these people is complicit in one of the most egregious abuses of power ever seen in history.

The government are making the rules up as they go. They’re changing them at a moment’s notice. They always make the claim that it’s “based on the health advice”. Well, unless they’re willing to actually put up the “health advice”, then I find it difficult to believe they are actually basing these decisions on such “advice”. Rather, many of these decisions have been imposed as a means of taking more power and control. They’ve even admitted so themselves at some points, stating that certain restrictions like the 9pm-5am curfews, which have no place in peacetime and do nothing to stop the virus (it’s not magically going to become nocturnal and only attack at night), have been imposed only to make the jobs of the police easier. That is all it is, and that is all it ever has been. Unelected bureaucrats also play a role in this, given they are practically the “health advice”. Whatever they deem fit, when most of them are unqualified to be making such decisions anyway, is made rule of law and enforced by police who ignore real crime while walking around and visiting people’s homes with the military to ensure compliance with these absurd unlawful measures.

Small businesses have suffered while corporations have grown, demonstrating that what the government is engaged in, other than destroying people’s lives and mental welfare, is a giant transfer of wealth from small business to big business. Your local small mom and pop store or the like are forced to close down, many going out of business, while big supermarket chains like Woolworths, Coles, Kmart, Big W, Target, and the like remain open, unscathed. Small business owners lose their share of the market, that share being handed over to big business with the help of the government.

The media’s complicity lies in their hunger for ratings, views, and clicks. The virus has provided them with a seemingly never-ending source of stories, so it’s unsurprising that they so desperately want it to continue. The press has also been engaging in constant fearmongering and have been hard-pressed to actually do their jobs and duty to the people of this nation and hold the government to account for their abrasive actions. Some in the media have been acting in appalling manners, bullying those who do not wish to have the vaccine and being quite abusive. Others have just sat on their hands and allowed the narrative to continue unfettered. There are the courageous few who have braved the inevitable backlash of speaking against the approved narrative, speaking out against the lockdowns and the restrictions, speaking out against vaccine passports and vaccine mandates, and I applaud them for doing so. They are true honest journalists, something that is hard to find in this day and age. Most in the media are more than happy to sit on their hands, repeat the cycle of fear-inducing news, call for harsher lockdowns and restrictions, and take their pay, which, like politicians, bureaucrats, and public servants, is unaffected by said restrictions and lockdowns.

And then there are those in the public who support the arbitrary measures imposed by our so-called “leaders”. Now many of these people are probably public servants whose wages are paid by the taxpayer, and so they are more than happy for the restrictions to continue considering it does not affect their income. Some, however, are not. Some are just so absorbed by what the government has promised them that they’ll believe anything they say and defend them without question. By now, people should have learnt that the government does not stick to their promises, that their word is meaningless. There have been so many instances where the government have said something would happen and it didn’t, and vice versa. For example, earlier this year, Scott Morrison said there would be no mandatory vaccines. Cut to today, and vaccines are now mandatory in several sectors of work, likely to be expanded to more. We were told there would be no vaccine passports, that they were a “conspiracy theory”. Now, they are a reality, and are being used as a tool to coerce people into getting the vaccine so that they may rejoin society. Scott Morrison has also announced that he is in favour of medical segregation, of which these vaccine passports play a major role. Gladys Berejiklian told us curfews don’t work; now we have curfews. NSW Health, among others, told us that there has not been one case of outdoor transmission since the start of the pandemic. Not long after, Gladys imposed mask mandates when leaving the premises of your home (even when you’re outside, walking the dog, alone).

Politicians don’t keep their promises. It’s about time people woke up to this reality. They’re not going to give you a reward for being a good subservient member of society. They’re not going to give you that pat on the back that you crave for dobbing in your neighbour. People who are doing that should just lock themselves in their homes and hide under their doona for the rest of their lives. If you are actively advocating for arbitrary measures, especially vaccine passports and mandates, then you really don’t deserve your freedom, because, quite frankly, you don’t value it, and you certainly do not care about the freedoms of your fellow citizens.

In fact, you are complicit in all the atrocities being purveyed upon what was once a free society by the government. You are supporting them in stopping people from seeing their dying relatives. You are supporting them in creating what is shaping up to be one of the worst mental health crises of our time. You are supporting them in destroying people’s lives, livelihoods, businesses, and education. You are supporting them in arresting and locking up people who just want their lives back (those people are not criminals). You are supporting this government tyranny, this rule without restraint. We have seen this occur in the past, and those who have been on the side of the ruling party have not been remembered fondly.

Let me make something very clear: the government is not your friend. They are not your carer. They are there to serve the people, and, right now, they are only serving themselves. They have become so corrupted by power, control, and greed. They have had the nerve to give themselves pay raises, paid for by us, while so many Australians suffer from the disastrous impact of their actions. Your compliance is not going to put an end to this. It will only prolong it.

And if you’re going to retort with something like: “if we all just do the right thing, we’ll get out of this sooner”, or “I know it’s hard and I want to see my family too, but that can’t happen until people do the right thing”, or even the tired old line “we’re all in this together”, you’re tragically incorrect. We have seen that complying only encourages those in power to continue down the avenue of complete control. Other people “not doing the “right” thing” are not who you should be blaming. The only people keeping you from living how you want to live and seeing your family are the government. So instead of directing your anger or disgust or even despair to other members of the general public, direct it toward those in power who are making these horrendous, inhumane decisions, and call them out on it. And are certainly not all in this together. Those in public office, in the media, and anyone else on the taxpayer dollar have not lost anywhere near as much as those in the general public. If we were really “all in this together”, they’d all take major pay cuts.

This does not end until we put an end to it. It’s a game of bluff. When those in power are called on it, they will inevitably panic and either make mistakes or backtrack rapidly. It is up to us to call their bluff and dam the waters of tyranny before they overflow.